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GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES

OF

THE ANTIQUITY OF MANRECONSIDERED.

AN ESSAY

BV

THOS. KARR CALLARD, F.G.S.

LONDON:ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G.

1875-

Pn'ce One Shilling.

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I

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CIU.H /^ (L^'&^^-T^.

GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES ^--.^

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN ^^

RECONSIDERED. ^ ^Ly ',.

AN ESSAY

TH05. A^^/^7? CALLARD, F.G.S.

LONDON

:

ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G.

1875.

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PREFACE.

Since the following essay was put into the hands of the

publisher, Dean Stanle3'^'s discourse on the " Religious Aspects

of Geology," preached on the occasion of the funeral of Sir

Charles Lyell, has appeared in Good Words.

In this discourse, so large and free in thought, and so

true in its testimony to the worth of the great geological

teacher, the Dean exults in the doctrine of Man's Antiquity.

He says it " ought to give a warmth, a fire to our heart

oi hearts—to our soul of souls—in proportion as we feel

that we are not the creatures of yesterday, but the ' heirs

of all the ages,' even the ages that cannot be numbered,

.and of worlds that have perished in the making of us."

The Dean gives up as hopeless the reconciliation of Science-

teaching with the letter of the earlier Biblical records, antl

is content with " the likeness of the general spirit of the

truths of science to the general spirit of the truths of the

Bible." He says of the earlier Biblical records that "they

were not, and could not be, literal and prosaic matter-of-fact

descriptions of the beginning of the world, of which, as o\

its end, ' no man knoweth,' or can conceive, except by

figure and'parable."

If we were prepared to accept the teaching of the earlier

Biblical records as simply teaching by figure and parable,

we should still expect that these figures and parables should

be the embodiment of truths, or else they would be to us

worse than useless. But it would be very difficult to find

any figurative or parabolical meaning in these early records

that would harmonise with the teaching corcerning thj

Antiquity of Mar.

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What meaning, for example, was intended to be conveyed

by those Biblical records, when they say that " God created

man in His own image?" Surely Palceolithic man was not

created in the image of God ; the image of the lowest savage,

just one remove from the brute, was all that was impressed

upon him.

What, again, could have been the parabolical teaching of

the fall of man ? Surely there was no room for Palaeolithic

man to fall ; he began at the very lowest, and there continued

age after age. Nor do our difficulties end with the earlier

Biblical records, for the New Testament teaching of restitution

in Christ Jesus loses all its meaning if the history of manwas one of progress without a fall.

I would earnestly commend to such a lover of truth 4s

the Dean of Westminster the reconsideration of the question

of Man's Antiquity. It may be he will find that upon this

subject science is not so far at variance with the teaching of

the earlier Biblical records as may to some minds appear.

THOMAS KARR CALLARD.

Blenheim Terrace, St. John's Wood.

May, 1875.

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THE GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES

ANTIQUITY OF MAN RECONSIDERED.

Whatever is clearly proven by science we are bound to

receive as trutJi, however much it may clash with precon-

ceived opinions. But we are not bound to receive as

science any hypothesis that may be propounded by even

a master mind. Whilst it is but hypothesis, further know-

ledge may either confirm the theory, or may lead to its

being withdrawn.

The question which we wish to discuss in this paper is,

whether or not science has, as yet, afforded evidence of the

great antiquity of man sufficient to justify us in accepting

the doctrine as an ascertained truth }

The First Man not a Savage.

This subject is of greater importance than may at first

sight appear. It is not simply the question whether the

first man, Adam, began his life on the earth seven thousand

or seven hundred thousand years ago ; but it is also the

question whether Adam was indeed the first man, or

whether a race of men lived ages before him.

It also raises the question whether man came into exist-

ence a wretched savage, struggling for life in daily conflict

with the cave-bear and hyena, the mastodon and mam-mothj'^or whether he was created the child of God with full

intellect;

placed amongst the beauties of Eden, in the

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enjoyment of domestic happiness, and made capable of

daily and hourly communion with his Maker.

Some thinkers, who accept the doctrine of man's great

antiquity, believe that they have found proof in it that the

sacred history of man's origin is altogether a myth : whilst

others who cannot so easily part with what appears so

clearly revealed, are drawn to the conclusion that m.an

must have inhabited the globe long before the existence of

our race ; but about which man revelation is altogether

silent, and with which earlier race Ave claim no relationship

in the way of lineage.

When the latter read in the Epistle to the Corinthians

that " the first man, Adam, was made a living soul," they

have to qualify the sense by supposing that St. Paul only

meant the first man of the existing race. When the same

Apostle says that " as in Adam all die, even so in Christ

shall all be made alive," he is clearly referring to the Adamof the Book of Genesis as the first man with whom we have

to do. With any preceding man, or race of men, the NewTestament recognizes no more connexion than it does with

the inhabitants of Mars or Jupiter.

The first man of revelation was not a savage ; it was not

he who chipped the flints of Abbeville, or left his stone

knife in the cave at Brixham ; nor was he descended from

those who did. If wc accept the Book of Revelation, the

condition of our primal ancestors is clearly defined.

If science can prove that man lived before the time of

Adam, we are bound to accept that proof as we accept the

proof that the Ichthyosaurus lived before his time ; but it

does not therefore follow that our race descended from that

Palaeolithic man any more than that our modern lizards

descended from the Ichthyosaurus. We need not here

enter upon the question of man's derivation—for, whether

it was that of creation or evolution, the doctrine of cvolu-

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tion is not necessarily connected witli man's antiquity ; wewill, therefore, in the present inquiry confine our attention

exclusively to the evidences of man's antiquit}-.

J/an's Antiquity Argued front the Chipped Flints of the

Somme Gravels.

M. Boucher dc Perthes, of Abbeville, between the years

1836 and 1839, directed the attention of the French

naturalists and geologists to the chipped flints that he

every now and then came across amongst the quaternary

gravels of the river Somme, which flints afforded evidence

to him of having been used as implements by man, and

being found where they were, indicated to his mind the

great antiquity of the race by whom these implements had

been produced.

Dr. RigoIIot some years later carried on the same kind

of research, in the same class of gravels in the neighbour-

hood of Amiens, and having in 1854 found in the quater-

nary deposits of St. Acheul chipped flints similar to those

discovered by M. Boucher de Perthes, at Abbeville, he be-

came a convert to the doctrine of man's great antiquity.

English geologists now began to have their attention

directed to these gravels, and Mr. John Evans, this year

President of the Geological Society, Mr. Prestwich, Dr.

Falconer, and others went across to Picardy to examine

them, and on their return to England expressed their con-

viction of the antiquity of the beds explored, and also of

the existence of man at the time of the gravel deposits.

After this the late venerable Sir Charles Lyell, having

personally inspected the excavations, made known, at the

meeting of the British Association at Aberdeen in 1859,

his belief in the existence of man in the quaternary period.

In February, 1863, he wrote his book upon the Antiquity

of Man, which passed through four editions. Sir John

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8

Lubbock has taught the same doctrine in his Prehistoric

Times. Mr. David Page has introduced the subject into

his text books of geology, as if the conclusion was beyond

all dispute, whilst M. Louis Figuier, with lively imagination,

gives vivid pictures of the prehistoric savage as he fought

with the mammoth, and feasted on its remains. So far,

indeed, have our men of advanced science accepted these

conclusions, that Dr. Carpenter, from the Presidential chair

of the British Association, held at Brighton, in the year

1872, speaking of the flint implements of the Abbeville

and Amiens gravel beds, said, " No logical proof can be

adduced that the peculiar shapes of these flints were given

to them by human hands ; but does any unprejudiced per-

son now doubt it .?" And again he says, "What was in the

first instance a matter of discussion has now become one of

those self-evident propositions, which claim the unhesitating

assent of all whose opinion on the subject is entitled to the

least weight."

Mr. James Geikie also gives in his adherence to the

doctrine of man's antiquity, and would carry that antiquity

back even farther than Sir Charles Lyell, inasmuch as Sir

Charles Lyell would make man post-glacial ; but Mr. Geikie,

in his Great Ice Age* supposes man to be inter-glacial.

Let us now look closely at the evidence of man's antiquity

derived from the river Somme.

It is stated that flint implements, the handiwork of

man, have been discovered in the undisturbed quaternary

gravels of that river, which gravels must, it is argued, from

their position, have been deposited there thousands upon

thousands of years before the supposed date of the Bible

account of man's creation. The river has cut its channel

in some places nearly 200 feet deep, and deposited the

gravels (in which the presumed implements of man are

• Great Ice Age, p. 507.

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found) from within about fifteen feet of the surface to the

very bottom of the channel. All this must have taken

place since the implements in the upper gravels were left

where they are now found.

Grozutk of Peat Moss.

In addition to this, beds of peat have grown over some of

the lower parts of the valley six-and-twenty feet in thick-

ness ; and it is clear that the erosion of the valley must

have taken place before the peat began its growth ; so that

in calculating the age of the implements, the time that

would elapse in the growth of the twenty-six feet of peat

would have to be added to the time occupied in the erosion

of the valley from fifteen feet downwards.

M. Boucher de Perthes ascertained that the growth of

peat in that neighbourhood is so slow that not more than

an inch and a half, or at most two inches, would form in

a century ; if, then, the twenty-six feet of peat grew at this

rate, this vegetable formation would be the work of from

fifteen to twenty thousand years, and if to this be added

the time it would take for the quiet river Somme to scoop

out a valley varying from eighty to two hundred feet in

depth, the time required must have been enormously great.

Sir C. Lyell, in the Antiquity of Man, assigns for it a

period of a hundred thousand years.

If then the chipped flints were indeed the work of men,

and the erosion of the valley of the Somme and the growth

of the peat always proceeded at the same rate as at pre-

sent, the great antiquity of man must be a settled fact. If

on the other hand either the growth of the peat or the

erosion of the valley is not proved to have been uniform,

then, of course, the argument for man's great antiquity, so

far as the river Somme is concerned, falls to the ground.

Now, it happens in the case of the peat that there is

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lO

evidence that it did not always grow at its present rate.

M. Boucher de Perthes called attention to the trunks of

some alders and birches that were found in the peat,

standing upright as they grew,—stumps a metre in height

;

these stumps must have stood 2,600 years, on the supposi-

tion that the peat always grew at its present rate, as it

would have taken that time to have encased them. The

fact of these upright stumps still standing is helpful in our

present inquiry. The botanist will form a judgment how

long trees will stand after the collar of the tree has been

overgrown with moist peat, and thus the standing of the

trunks will become the standard by which to measure the

growth of the peat at that period.

Dr. Andrews, of Chicago, coming to the examination of

this subject with his knowledge of the backwoods of

America, says that these trees, situated as they were, would

have decayed and fallen in about sixty years, if within that

time the peat had not grown over them, and thus secured

the stumps from atmospheric influences. A hundred

years, he says, is a long period for an oak to stand in such

circumstances, and birch stumps are especially perishable.

If then Dr. Andrews is right, for the birch and alder

stumps did stand until they were encased, it is clear

that the peat must at that time have been growing at the

rate of about five feet in a century, instead of two inches;

at which rate five or six hundred years, instead of twenty

thousand, would have allowed ample time for the pro-

duction of the twenty-six feet of peat ;" and this more

rapid growth would be in perfect harmony," says Dr.

Andrews, " with its increase in the wilds of America." The

rate of growth, as he remarks, depends greatly upon the

accumulation of decayed vegetable matter, which naturally

lessens as civilisation extends. Making then every allow-

ance for the retarded growth within the last few centuries.

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there is nothing in this production of peat to lead us to

assign any greater antiquity to man than that which until

lately was generally accepted.

Erosion of the Soviuie Valley.

The next subject to consider will be the erosion of the

valley and deposit of the gravel. But before the present

rate of erosion can be taken as a datum by which to cal-

culate the time occupied by the river in making its present

channel, it must be shown that the rate of erosion has

always been uniform. Now, this will depend greatly upon

the volume of the w^ater-flow, for if at any time that flow

was larger than at present, in that proportion would the

time of erosion and deposit be less.

Long after Sir Charles Lyell had given an approximate

time for the formation of the delta of the Mississippi, he

said that " the data on which he argued had considerably

altered since first he wrote upon the subject, inasmuch as

recent calculation had doubled the estimated volume of

water flowing into the sea, and thus it was capable of pro-

ducing the same effect in half the previously calculated

time.*

In like manner, the scooping of the valley in question

and its gravel deposit depended upon the volume of the

stream. What then, we would ask, arc the probabilities of

the river Somme having been a larger river than it is at

present } This, we think, is answered by the fact that the

stream is not now more than fifty or sixty feet broad,

whilst the eroded valley is from six to eight thousand;

beside which, there are sandstone boulders in the channel

of a ton weight, which have been brought down the river

from a considerable distance. It matters little whether

these have been carried down by an impetuous torrent, or,

* Geological Journal, 1869, p. n.

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as suggested by Mr. Prestwich, by river ice ; in either case

the fact would indicate a river of vastly different propor-

tions from those of the present. Mr. Prestwich, whilst he

could not see whence the large supply of water could be

obtained, still says that it seems to him " that to form such

beds of gravel, some greater water force must have been in

operation than that which now obtains."

Mr. Alfred Tylor, who has given much attention to

gravel deposits, says that no one can see the great valley

of the Somme without being convinced that in the quater-

nary period this chalk valley was filled with a large river,

and remarks that where the chalk is covered with vegeta-

tion the atmosphere acts slowly upon it ; but wherever it is

suddenly exposed to the air and cold, it crumbles away

with great rapidity ; and he also calculates the rainfall in

the gravel period at 125 times that of the present.* Dr.

Andrews, when he visited the Somme, remarked that the

present stream, if spread over the valley, would not be

half an inch deep ; but the stream that excavated that

valley filled it from bluff to bluff, and must have been a

thousand times the volume of the present river. f If then

the waterflow was so much greater than at present, in that

proportion would the time occupied in the erosion be so

much less. And if, in addition to this, the north of France

(as is generally supposed by those who have studied the

question) had but lately emerged from beneath an icy

sea,—which, according to Sir H. T. De la Bcche, had

covered that part of France to the extent of 1,000 feet

deep, J—the conditions would be most favourable for a

rapid erosion.

Should it then be proven to demonstration that the

* Geological Magazine, 1872, pp. 393—498.

t American Journal of Science and Arts, Vol. XLV.1, Geological Observer, p. 256.

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chipped flints were the work of men, seeing that it remains

unproven that the growth of the peat and the erosion of the

valley occupied the time calculated, the whole argument

for man's antiquity based on that assumption becomes nil.

Extinct Mammalia.

The next evidence adduced for the great antiquity of

man is that of finding his presumed implements along w^ith

the remains of the mammoth, the cave-hyena, the cave-

bear, and other extinct mammalia. Until quite modern

times it was universally accepted by geologists and palaeon-

tologists, as a settled fact, that a great gulf divided these

extinct species from the human race ; but the exploration

of ossiferous caves from the time of Dr. Buckland's re-

searches in Kirkdale to that of Mr. Pengelly's, now going

on in Kent's Hole, Torquay, has led to the conclusion that

man must have been contemporaneous with these extinct

animals, because, along with their bones and teeth are

found mixed in the red earth what are supposed to be

flint knives. If, then, man lived with the extinct mam-malia, it is argued that his antiquity must be immensely

greater than was at one time supposed. But why this con-

clusion } Why not bring mammoth forzvard. instead of

putting man back ? Extinct animals prove nothing with

regard to time, per sc. The moa is extinct, the dodo is

extinct ; and if the implements of man were found along

with their remains, that would not prove any great anti-

quity, it would only show that man might have lived in

the reign of one of the four Georges. Simply to show

that man lived at the time of the mammoth and the bos

primigeniiis, proves nothing unless it can also be shown

when those animals became extinct. There is nothing in

the bones themselves to prove any great antiquity, none of

them are petrifactions ; besides which, with the remains of

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14

extinct species, there are also mingled some of the species

now existing, both the horse and the tiger being repre-

sented in the caves of Brixham and Torquay.

Ossiferous Caves.

But these caves have yielded another argument for the

antiquity of man, from the fact that the remains referred to

are covered by stalagmite floorings of considerable thick-

ness. The argument is put thus by Mr. Alfred Wallace,

in his review of Sir Charles Lyell's recent edition of the

Antiqttity of Man :—" Names cut into the stalagmite more

than two centuries ago, are still legible,* showing that, in

a spot where the drip is now copious, not more than one-

eighth of an inch has been deposited in that length of

time. This gives about 100,000 years for the five feet

stalagmite floor. But below this there is another and

much older layer of stalagmite, very thick,! and much

more crystalline than the upper one, showing that it was

probably formed at a slower rate;yet below this again,

in a solid breccia, undoubted works of art have been

found. A fair estimate will, therefore, give us 100,000

years for the upper stalagmite, and about 250,000 for

the deeper layer; and allowing 150,000 for the deposit of

the cave-earth between the stalagmite floorings, we arrive

at the sum of half a million, as representing the years that

have probably elapsed since flints of human workmanship

were buried in the lowest deposits of Kent's Cavern."J

We would ask why should that stalagmite be always

forming at equal rate .' or, rather, how is it possible that it

could have been always forming at equal rate } When the

thick forest (the habitat of the animals whose bones arc

The following are amongst the names and dates—Robert Hedges of

Ireland, Feb. 20th, 1688. Peter Lemane. Richard Colby of London, 1615.

t In some parts of the cavern it is twelve feet in thickness.

X Nature, October 2nd, 1S73.

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15

found in the cave) left an accumulation of decayed vege-

tation on the soil, we had the natural laboratory wherein the

rain would find the carbonic acid, to act as a solvent upon

the calcareous earth, and, as this acidulous liquid perco-

lated through the soil, and dripped into the cave, we see

the origin of the stalagmite. But, as by the axe of manthe forest decreased, in that proportion the chemicals

lessened, and, as a consequence, the deposit diminished.

Nothing now covers the cave but a little brushwood, and

over the corresponding stalagmite cave at Brixham there

now stands a row of houses. Besides the diminution of

t he solvent every year that the operation was going on,

the material that composed the stalagmite must have been

decreasing in the superjacent soil, so that the bicarbonate

of lime, which now takes two centuries to cover one-eighth

of an inch, might, in days gone by, have performed the

work in a very few months. The comparative rapidity with

which stalagmite is formed in Derbyshire is well known.

In Poole's Hole, near Buxton, one-eighth of an inch of

stalagmite was deposited on the gas-pipes which were used

in lighting the caves, six months after they were placed

there (see Natiire, January i, 1874), at which rate of

deposit 800 years would have sufficed, instead of 350,000,

for the formation of the two stalagmite floorings. Another

case is given in Nature,'^ in which at Boltsburn, near

Durham, three-quarters of an inch of crystalline stalagmite

had formed on boards which had, in connection with the

working of a lead mine, been placed there just fifteen years

previous. At this rate 4,080 years would have been the

extreme time required for the formation of the stalagmite

floorings of Kent's Hole. There is no reason to suppose

that stalagmite would take longer to form in Devonshire

than it does in Derbyshire or Durham : its having done so

* Nature, December i8th, 1873.

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i6

within the last two centuries at Kent's Hole and Brixham

Cave, evidently has arisen from an altered condition of the

covering of those caves.

However interesting, then, may be these ossiferous

caverns, they afford no proof of man's great antiquity.

As to the 150,000 years allowed for the deposit of the

cave-earth, it is without a tittle of evidence.

T/ie Glacial Epoch.

We will now come to one of the evidences of man's

antiquity which belongs to the province of astronomy as

much as to that of geology. We refer to that of man's

existence near the time of the glacial epoch.

All geologists are now agreed that the world has had

an Ice Age. Striated rocks, to the height of 6,000 feet;

boulders, left hundreds of miles south of their place of

origin; alpine erratics, perched on Jura mountains; lateral

and terminal moraines (the production of glaciers), where

no glaciers now exist, together with wide-spread boulder

clay, and deposits of gravel-drift, all speak plainly of a

glacial period. Whilst there may be still a difference of

opinion as to how many of the phenomena are to be attri-

buted to icebergs, how many to gigantic local glaciers, and

how many to an ice cap pressing from the pole to the

equator, these different views about the mode of ice action,

raise no question about the fact of a glacial epoch. Wewould also add that every fresh geological survey affords

additional proof that ice-action was far more widely

extended over the surface of the globe than was at first

suspected.

In 1873 Mr. Campbell writes:—

" I have got a long way

towards the more advanced glacial theory since I printed

Frost and Fire, in 1865. When I review all that I have

seen in Finland and Scandinavia, in Iceland and Labrador,

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1/

in Greece, in the Alps, in Spain, and in America west to

the Mississippi, the whole of my knowledge of facts leads

me to a very great extension of all glacial systems."* AndMr. Thomas Belt, in the Quarterly Journal of Science,

October, 1874, says, "The glacial systems had reached in

the tropics, at least, as far as Nicaragua, where, within

thirteen degrees of the equator, he found undoubted traces

of glacial action, reaching to 2,000 feet above the sea level,

where snow now never falls."

The same author says, in his Naturalist in Nicaragua,

published October, 1873 :—

" Bidding adieu to our host, wemounted our mules, and descended the ridge on which

their hut was built. The range was very steep, and fully

1,200 feet high, composed entirely of boulder clay ; not

until we had travelled about five miles did we see any

rocks in situ. This boulder clay had extended all the wayfrom San Rafael, and ranges of hills appeared to be com-

posed entirely of it." " I was unprepared at the time to

believe that the glacial period could have left such memo-rials of its existence within the tropics, at not greater eleva-

tions above the sea than three thousand feet."t

That man lived soon after the close of this glacial

period, is inferred from his presumed implements, both

in England and France, being obtained from the gravels

lying in immediate contact with the boulder clay ; and the

fact that these implements are found along with the

remains of animals of Arctic species, strengthens the

opinion that the boreal climate had not fully passed awaywhen man became an inhabitant of the globe.

Some geologists Jiave supposed that man lived at a still

earlier period, but' Sir Charles Lyell expresses the moregeneral view] when _he says " the sections obtained near

* Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 1873. Pp. 213, 218.

t Pp. 247, 248, 273, 274.

B

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i8

Bedford and at Hoxne, in Suffolk, have taught us that

the earliest signs of man's appearance in the British Isles

hitherto detected are oi post-glacial date."* And in 1822,

when he published his last edition of the Principles of

Geology, he still said, " We have not yet succeeded in

detecting proofs of the origin of man antecedently to that

epoch." \

Let the chronological relation between the glacial and

the human period be established, the question then comes,

At what time in the earth's history did that glacial epoch

take place } The answer to this question affords the datum

by which is determined the greater or lesser antiquity of

man. Sir Charles Lyell, in the earlier editions of his

Principles of Geology, favoured the \'icw of Mr. James' Croll, that the Ice Age was 800,000 years back ; he,

therefore, placed man's origin near to that period. But

Sir John Lubbock considered 210,000 years to be a more

probable ^time. To this lesser antiquity both Mr. Croll

and Sir Charles Lyell afterwards gave in their adherence

;

it is also adopted by Mr. James Geikie, in his recent work,

The Great Ice Age.

Before we can accept either of these dates, we must very

carefully follow every step of the argument by which they

are reached ; and this leads us to the perplexing'question.

What was the cause of the glacial epoch .? There is

nothing whatever in the glacial epoch itself to fix its

own date, so the correctness of date will depend entirely

upon the correctness or otherwise of the cause or causes

assigned for the tremendous ice period.

• Aniiquity 0/ Mail, Fourth Edition. f P. 306.

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19

Excentricity of t/ic Earth's Orbit the Supposed Cause of

the Glacial Period.

The hypothesis, which points to dates, is that of Mr.

James Croll,—viz., that the glacial period, or periods, were

occasioned by the changes in the excentricity of the

earth's orbit, together with the alterations produced by

the precession of the equinoxes, and variations in the

obliquity of the ecliptic. It is w^ell known that the orbit

of the earth is not a perfect circle, but an ellipsis ; the

earth is not the same distance from the sun in the month

of July that it is in the month of January, for whilst in

July the distance would be about 93,000,000 of miles, in

January it would be under 90,000,000. Then, again, this

departure from the circle, called the excentricity of the

orbit, is not the same in all ages. By the gravitation of

the other planets, the earth is capable of being drawn out

of a circular orbit to the extent of 14,212,710 miles, which

is the earth's maxiinuin excentricity. The thought had

occurred to Sir John Herschel that this change in tlic

earth's distance from the sun might occasion some differ-

ence in the temperature of the globe, and Mr. James CroII,

following out the same idea, thought that he saw in it

(combined with other cosmical changes) the efficient cause

of the glacial epoch. Lagrange and Leverrier had pre-

viously gone into astronomical calculations, in order to

ascertain when, by planetary gravitation, this maximumexcentricity could have taken place, but these and other

calculations made at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich,

show that for the last 500,000 years there could not have

been a greater excentricity than 10,500,000 miles, whicli

excentricity occurred 210,000 years ago, and Mr. Croll has

carried the laborious calculations back to 1,000,000 years,

still without reaching the maximum excentricity ; but as

B 2

u

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an excentrlcity of 13,500,000 miles was shown by these

calculations to have taken place 851,000 years ago, he, at

first, suggested that as the time of the last glacial period,

but afterwards, as already referred to, gave up the larger

for the smaller date.

Instead of discussing the relative claims of the 210,000

years, with its 10,500,000 miles of excentricity, and the

851,000 years, with its 13,500,000 excentricity, we would

rather ask the question. Would either excentricity pro-

duce the effect referred to ? Could it be the cause, or

even one of the causes, of the glacial epoch ? We are to

argue from the known to the unknown. Now there is

nothing known in astronomy to help us to such a conclu-

sion, for the earth, when in aphelion at the time of

maximum excentricity, is many millions of miles nearer

to the sun than is the planet Mars at every part of its

orbit, yet Mars is not in a state of glaciation ;—like the

earth, it has its snowy poles, but whilst the snows have

been observed to decrease with the summer, and increase

with the winter, " they have never," says Sir J. W. Her-

schel, " been traced beyond six degrees from the poles."*

Both the telescope and the spectroscope show that it is

not, at present, an ice age in Mars.f And in addition to the

greater uniform distance of Mars from the sun, compared

with that of the earth, Mars has also a much greater

excentricity than the earth. The present excentricity of

Mars is 11,000,000 of miles greater than that of the earth

at its maxinmvi. Such an excentricity would, upon the

hypothesis of Mr. Croll, have given to Mars one hemi-

sphere ice-bound almost to the equator, whilst the other

hemisphere was enjoying a perpetual spring, but instead

of that being the case, the snow-clad regions of winter

• Sir J. W. Herschel's Ouilbics of Aiironomy, tenth edition, p. 339.

t See R. Proctor's Other Worlds than Ours, p. 107.

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very closely resemble that of the northern tracts of Asia

and America, whilst in summer the snow disappears to an

ice circle of 6° or 8° round the pole.*

Again, if we confine our attention to our own planet, we

have, at the present time, an excentricity of 3,000,000

miles, but the earth is not colder in the month of July,

when at the greatest distance from the sun, than it is in

January, when nearest to the sun ; indeed, an average

taken of both hemispheres shows an excess of six degrees

of heat in July over that of January, not that the earth is

hotter because farther from the sun, but hotter notwith-

standing it is farther from the sun. This is explained by

its being the northern hemisphere (which has a larger

proportion of land than the southern), having its summer

solstice when in aphelion, whilst the southern hemisphere

(with its larger proportion of water) has its summer solstice

when in perihelion, and land receives and radiates heat to a

greater degree than water.

Now, an increased excentricity in no way alters this

relationship. The greater radiating surface of the northern

hemisphere would still have the summer sun in aphelion;

all that the increased distance could do (if it had any

appreciable effect) would be to lower by some degrees the

summer temperature ; it would not change summer into

winter. The 10,500,000 miles of excentricity would only

be adding 7,500,000 to that which at present exists, and

the present excentricity cannot be shown to have produced

any effect whatever. This greater excentricity, as com-

pared with the present, would only affect the northern

hemisphere for about twenty of its midsummer days, for

this would be the limit of time at which the earth would

be at that extra distance, and this extra distance would be

compensated for at the opposite side of the earth's orbit,

* See R. Proctor's The Orbs Around Us.

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b)' the earth being the same number of miles nearer to the

sun during the winter of the northern hemisphere. It

seems, then, obvious that a cooler summer and a propor-

tionately milder winter annually recurring, with spring and

autumn as at present, could not have been the conditions

to produce the glacial period, when an ice-sheet, 3,000 feet

in thickness, passed over Scotland;* when "Ireland, like

Greenland, was entirely covered "f with this stupendous

glacier, that broke off in icebergs in the Atlantic ocean;

and when ice-action left its evidence in the form of boulder

clay, within 900 miles of the equator.

Precession of the Equinoxes.

But Mr. Croll did not attribute the glacial period to

the excentricity of the earth's orbit alone, but to that in

conjunction with changes produced by the precession of

the equinoxes. We know that the cold of northern

latitudes, when the earth is nearest to the sun, is occa-

sioned by the rays of the sun falling obliquely upon

the northern hemisphere, in consequence of the obliquity

of the earth. But by the slow yet constant precession of

the equinoxes in every 10,500 years, the northern and

southern hemispheres change places in this respect. After

that lapse of time the northern hemisphere will have its

winter solstice when at the greatest distance from the sun,

instead of its summer solstice as at present, and if this

took place 210,000 years ago, when the earth's orbit had

10,500,000 miles of excentricity, ^Ir. Croll sees in such com-

bined conditions the cause of the devastating cold of the

glacial period. But it must be borne in mind that the

change in the earth's position, that would give winter to

the northern hemisphere when in aphelion, would also

* Geikie's Great Ice As;e, pp. 83—95.

t J. F. Campbell, F.G.S., Geological youriial, 1S73.

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23

give summer to the same hemisphere when in perihelion ;

there would be the same combined conditions to produce

increased summer heat that there would be at the other

side of the orbit to produce increased winter cold ; and

who that has been in the Valley of the Rhone in the

months of July or August could conceive of that hot

valley being filled with a glacier 3,000 feet in thickness,*

passing the present Martigny and Villeneuve, filling the

deep Lake of Geneva, and moving on to the Jura moun-

tains, there to deposit the granite boulders it had carried

from the Alps, nearly seventy miles across the Swiss

valley ; and, above all, who could conceive of this being

the case in a summer much hotter than the present, as

much hotter as the winter would be colder, especially

as a normal spring and autumn would come between the

two extremes ? It is argued, both by Mr. Croll and Mr.

James Geikie, that much of the summer heat would be

taken up in melting the accumulation of snow and ice

which had been occasioned by the cold at the time of

the earth's aphelion, and, as a consequence, the summer

in perihelion would not be so hot as might otherwise be

expected.

There might be some force in this argument if we had

an ice-bound hemisphere to commence with, but, such

not being the case, it surely cannot be supposed for a

moment that one winter's frost would produce it, and

if not, How was the condition brought about ? There

could have been no accumulation from season to season,

for the additional snow and ice resulting from the addi-

tional days of extra excentricity in the time of the earth's

aphelion would all be gone long before the middle of

summer was reached, and the next winter would only

be a repetition of the one preceding. Sir Charles Lyell

• Great Ice Age, p. 400.

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mentions in his Principles of Geology that Mr. Alexander

Agassiz, when living on the shores of Lake Superior,

describes the thermometer as being at 5" below zero for

four months in the year, and says that the average annual

snowfall of fifteen years was seventy-two feet, yet the

snow never lay more than six feet thick on the ground,

and disappeared completely in the summer, the snow being

chiefly got rid of by evaporation, like camphor. He also

mentions that the ground beneath the snow never froze.

Now however much the earth's excentricity at the

period referred to may have increased the severity of a

certain number of mid-winter days, that severity could

not have lasted a fourth of the time referred to by

Agassiz, for within that time the earth would have been

back to its present distance from the sun. If, then, the

glaciated condition of the Rhone Valley should ever be

repeated, or the time ever again arrive in which the gla-

ciers Des Bossons, Mer de Glace, and Argentiere fill up

the Vale of Chamounix, we are convinced that it will be

at a period of long-continued cold summers as well as of

severe winters, which are conditions that never can be

produced by increased excentricity, or by cquinoxial

precession.

Glaciation of the Southern Hemisphere.

If an additional proof is wanted that these were not

the causes of the glacial period, we think that proof is

afforded by the recent investigations south of the equator

by the late Prof. Agassiz, and others. Instead of the glacia-

tion being confined, as was once supposed, to the northern

hemisphere, it is now found to have equally prevailed in

the southern. If, then, the precession of the equinoxes

could, by changing the relative positions of the northern

and southern hemispheres, have favoured the glaciation

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25

of the north, to that same extent it would have prevented

the glaciation of the south. This is so obvious, that all

geologists who accept Mr. Croll's hypothesis have to

suppose that the glacial epoch of the northern and

southern hemispheres took place at different periods, and

that the two hemispheres were glaciated alternately, at

a distance of 10,500 years apart. But for this there is

no independent geological evidences ; it is only supposed

to be so because the hypothesis requires it.

The southern hemisphere is, at the present time, in

exactly the same position with respect to its winter and

summer solstice, as the northern hemisphere would be by

the precession of the equinoxes in 10,500 years to come;

but the southern hemisphere has not at present the two

extremes of heat and cold which it is supposed will be

the case with the northern hemisphere when in the same

position, and upon which the glaciation is supposed to

depend. True, there is a lower mean annual temperature

in the southern hemisphere than in the northern, but there

is not a lower mean winter temperature : the average is

brought down by summer coolness, not by winter severity.

According to the tables of Prof. Dove, of Berlin, the mean

summer temperature of the southern hemisphere is but

59° 5, whilst the mean summer temperature of the northern

is 700 9 ; the mean winter temperature of the southern

hemisphere is not lower than 53° 6, whilst the mean

winter temperature of the northern hemisphere goes down

to 48° 9,* The greatest difference, then, is not in the

southern hemisphere, but in the northern, and the mean

cold of the southern winter is less than that of the northern

by 5°. It may be said that this is explained by a larger

proportion of water being in the southern hemisphere than

in the northern, but there is nothing in the change con-

* Prof. Dove's Distribution of Heat on the Surface of the Globe, p. 25.

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26

templated to alter that relative proportion of water and

land ; all that an increased excentricity of the earth's orbit

could do for the southern hemisphere would be to makethe summer warmer and the winter colder, and so produce

a climate more like that of the present northern hemisphere,

and we know that that would not produce a southern

glacial epoch. I\Ir. Joseph Murphy well remarks that

" an examination of the facts of physical geography shows

that the extent of glaciation depends on the extent of

perpetual snow ; and perpetual snow means summer

snow."* But an increase of excentricity would of necessity

lessen the summer snow in the southern hemisphere.

The glacial epoch of the southern hemisphere is as

clearly proven as is that of the northern, and if a

merely increased excentricity would not produce it, how

was it brought about } The precession of the equinoxes

has not to be taken into the calculation, so far as the

southern hemisphere is concerned, it having already its

winter when the earth is in aphelion, and no hypothesis

will be satisfactory which docs not account for the glacia-

tion of both hemispheres.

Obliquity of the Ecliptic.

An alteration in the obliquity of the ecliptic has also

been suggested by Mr. Croll as an added reason for the

glacial period; but if La Place is correct in his calculation,

that this would be possible only to the extent of i° 21' on

each side of the equator, any effect upon climate, produced

by such an alteration, would be quite inappreciable ; but

if the conclusion of Leverrier is preferred, viz., that an

obliquity of 4° 3' could take place, we have room for a

change of climate equivalent to London being in the lati-

tude of Newcastle for a few weeks each winter ; for which

• Spectator, May ?, 1874.

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2/

compensation would be made in summer by the metropolis

being, for the same time, in a temperature equivalent to

the latitude of Orleans, in France. This would be the

result of a maximum obliquity, whilst at the minimum the

temperature of winter and summer would corne nearer to

each other than at present.

It is the latter condition—the lessened obliquity—to

which Mr. CroU looks for the additional cause of the

glacial period. It is difficult to reconcile this with an

increased excentricity being also a cause, as a decreased

obliquity lessens the difference between winter cold and

summer heat, whilst increased excentricity enlarges that

difference. How, we may ask, could both conditions be

favourable to glaciation } Besides which it is mere conjec-

ture that all the conditions favourable to glaciation took

place at the same time ; no proof can be afforded

that diminished obliquity was contemporaneous with the

northern hemisphere's winter solstice taking place with the

earth in aphelion, at the time of maximum excentricity.

There is yet another circumstance to which Mr. Croll

directs attention, it is this : that if the northern hemisphere

had its winter solstice with the earth in aphelion at the

time of maximum excentricity, it would occasion the sun

to be about^thirty days longer south of the equator than it

would be north. The number of days that the sun would

be longer south than north, under the circumstances pre-

sumed, with an excentricity of 10,500,000 miles, would be

twenty-seven. This would probably affect, to some extent,

the mean annual temperature of the northern hemisphere;

we must not, however, attribute too much to the twenty-

seven days, because, to the extent of seven and a half

days ^the same remark applies now to the southern hemi-

sphere, Fwithout any observable influences. Mr. Croll

himself, when treating of the supposed greater loss of

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heat by the southern than by the northern hemisphere,

says "the experiments and observations which have been

made on underground temperatures afiford us a means of

making, at least, a rough estimate of the amount, and

from these it will be seen that the influence of an excess

of seven or eight days in the length of the southern

winter over the northern could hardly produce an effect

that would be sensible." * So the case supposed of the

northern hemisphere having twenty-seven winter days in

excess would be covered by a very few degrees of

temperature.

Whilst there is much ingenuity in all the suggestions

of Mr. Croll, with painstaking investigation, yet, every

cause assigned for increased cold is so nearly balanced

by increased heat, that it is difficult to reach the conclusion

at which Mr. Croll has arrived. For if maximum excen-

tricity occasioned increased cold at one side of the earth's

orbit, it also occasioned increased heat at the opposite side,

and if that increased cold was aggravated by the preces-

sion of the equinoxes, by the same cause would the

increased heat be enhanced ; and if diminished obliquity

increased the cold of arctic and antarctic regions, it also

increased the heat of torrid and temperate zones. Andit must not be overlooked that any hypothesis that

does not account for glaciers in temperate, and even

tropical zones, coming nearer to the sea level than at

present, and of a considerable lowering of the snow-line

in equatorial regions, falls short of the requirements of

the case.

* Philosophical Magazine, i86g, p. 222.

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Change in the Sun's Photosphere a Suggested Cause of the

Glacial Epoch.

So far as can yet be seen, the only cause of the glacial

epoch, that would cover all the phenomena, would be such

a change, for a certain time, in the photosphere of the sun,

as would occasion a diminution of heat in every part of

the earth's orbit : such a change as a lessening in the

combustion of the chromosphere, which, whilst producing

greater cold over every portion of the globe, would still

not interfere with the variations of temperature produced

by degrees of latitude. Floating ice in tropical seas

would be accompanied by corresponding severity as the

poles were approached. If such a change in the sun's

photosphere should prove to have been the cause of the

Ice Age, it would follow that the glaciation of the northern

and southern hemispheres would be synchronous, and this

best agrees with observed conditions. The increased

warmth of the miocene period, and the fossil flora of the

Arctic regions, may also find an explanation in the

opposite change of photosphere. Now, such periods of

altered combustion would find their analogy in the photo-

spheres of other suns when they have risen and sunk from

one magnitude to another.*

Lieut.-Col. Drayson has given some reason for believing

that the pole of the heavens does not describe a circle

round the pole of the ecliptic, as is generally received by

astronomers, but that it describes a larger one around a

point six degrees from that centre. If Col. Drayson is

correct, the obliquity of the ecliptic, instead of being con-

fined to a variation of i° 21', as calculated by La Place, or

of 4° 3', as reckoned by Leverrier, would be capable of a

* See Testimony of the Rocks and Record of Moses, pp. 30, 31.

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variation of 12°. Mr. Thomas Belt, whilst differing from

Col. Drayson about a circle being described (as amongst

the heavenly bodies we have no circular movements),

agrees with Colonel Drayson in believing in a greatly

increased obliquity ; and as an obliquity to the extent

referred to would bring the arctic circle in winter to

latitude 54^^, this altered condition is supposed by them

to have been the cause of the glacial period.

But whatever was the cause of the Ice Age, it is

only that hypothesis which makes the cxcentricity of

the cartJis orbit the cause which touches the question

of this paper, viz., the Antiquity of Man. If that

excentricity was not the cause, there is nothing what-

ever to place the glacial period at 200,000 years

back. The hypothesis of Lieut.-Colonel Dra}'son would

fix the maximum obliquity, and therefore, according

to his view, the extremity of glaciation at only 15,500

years past.

If maximum excentricity was not the cause of the

glacial epoch, astronomy affords no more proof that it

took place 200,000 years ago, than that it closed eight or

ten thousand years back, and the presumed implements

of man's handicraft being found in the gravel beds in

contact with the boulder clay ceases to be evidence of

man's great antiquity.

Having now looked at the various reasons assigned

for the antiquity of the chipped flints of the quaternary

period — supposed to have been the implements of

man,— we are compelled to say that the evidence

adduced fails to establish that antiquity. In each case

something has to be assumed, nothing is scientifically

proven.

We might, then, close this essay by saying that if

these chipped flints were proven ever so clearly to

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31

have been the work of man, that would not prove man's

antiquity ; for the antiquity of the implements remains

yet unproven.

Origin of PalcBolithic Implements.

But we would ask the further question, are these chipped

flints of the Somme, and those of Kent's Hole, beyond

doubt of human origin ? After a very careful examination

of some hundreds of specimens, the conclusion which we

reach is, that man never touched them until they came

into the possession of the geologist or the modern work-

man by whom they were exhumed. It must be admitted

that there is sufficient resemblance between these chipped

flints and those of the savage of modern times just to

suggest the question whether or not man had chipped the

former, as he has undoubtedly done the latter;

yet, when

all the circumstances connected with them are considered,

the weight of evidence is vastly against the chipping being

the work of man.

Palaeolithic Implements Lacking Evidence of Design.

In the first place these flints of Amiens and St. Aucheul,

if chipped by design, exhibit a dexterity which very few

civilised men have been able to copy, and yet are lacking

the simplest contrivance to make them available as

weapons. Spear heads and arrow heads are comparatively

harmless things ; it is only as spear heads and arrow heads

imply spears and arrows that they convey the idea of

weapons ; but here these implements signally fail : this

is the very point on which they difi"er from the spear head

or arrow head of the modern savage, or of Neolithic man;

for these ancient flints are not so formed as to enable

them to be attached to shaft or reed, having neither notch

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nor tang, and are often, on the reverse side, left unchipped

just where the chipping is most needed. Besides which,

the largest seldom exceeds six or seven inches in length,

and that, without a shaft, would be but a sorry weapon

with which to do battle with the mammoth, the cave-

hyaena, or the ursus major.

Then, secondly, no other work of man is found along

with them. In certain breccia in Dordogne, bone needles

have been found, and rude carving, but they belong to a

more recent period. There are no needles or carving

found with the implements of Palaeolithic man ; chipped

flints by thousands, but nothing else ; and it is very difficult

to think of a race of men doing nothing else than chipping

flints, generation after generation, and that' for thousands

upon thousands of years as the advocates for the antiquity

of man suppose. And, observe, the race is making no

progress ; there is no merging of the Palaeolithic Age into

the Neolithic ; it is left to imagination to fill up that gap.

Of evidence there is none. Mr. Geikie remarks, in his

Great Ice Age, "We find no tools or weapons of inter-

mediate forms which might indicate a gradual improve-

ment, and progress from the rude types characteristic of

Palaeolithic times to the more finished implements used by

Neolithic man."* And Sir Charles Lyell says: "Thevast distance of time which separated the origin of the

higher and lower gravels of the valley of the Somme(both of them rich in flint implements of similar shape)

leads to the conclusion that the state of art in those early

times remained stationary for almost indefinite periods, t

And, again, there is no superiority in one nation over

that of another. Wherever Palaeolithic implements are

found, whether in France or England, their defects are

the same.

* Great Ice Age, p. 436. t Antiquity of Man, p. 421.

I

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33

Thirdly, it is singular that whilst the bones of the extinct

mammalia are found in such abundance, that a human

bone of that period has never yet been met with, for there

is no evidence that a human bone would be more perish-

able than the bones of those animals that are found ; nor

must it be supposed that the inhabitants were few, for in

three acres of land more than 3,000 tools have been ex-

humed, and Mr. Whitley, C.E., says that these beds are

now proved to extend more than twenty square miles

along the Somme Valley. Each man, then, must have

possessed a vast number of these shaftless spears and

handless hatchets, or else the population must have been

very great indeed, which makes it more remarkable that

no bone of man has yet been discovered.

Then, fourthly, these chipped flints, whether in England

or France, arc always met with just where you might

expect to find them if the chipping was the result of

accidental concussion. They are found in the coarse gravel

drift, not in the vegetable soil, which might have been the

hunting ground or the battle field. These would have

been the places to have looked for man's weapons and

implements ; but there you look in vain.

We have said that these Palaeolithic implements have

a certain resemblance to the weapons of the modern savage

;

but instead of drawing the inference that because man

made the latter, therefore man made the former, the re-

semblance we attribute to a natural cleavage in the flint

which gives to it a tendency, however struck or crushed,

to break into these particular forms, and that the modern

savage, availing himself of a natural production ready to

hand, has but added rude art to nature, and so produced

the weapon he wanted. Putting this thought to experi-

ment, the writer has spent some hours in roughly breaking

flints with a sledge hammer, and the result has been

C

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34

that he has found amongst the broken flint forms suffi-

ciently rcscinbliiig the supposed arrow heads, spear heads,

serrated edged saws, &c., to convince him that as many

years spent in this way as AI. Boucher de Perthes and

Dr. Rigollot have occupied in their research at Abbeville

and St. Aucheul, would be likely to result in finding

among the broken flints the choice specimens that they

have treasured up ; for it must be borne in mind that

they simpl}- made a selection ; it was not every broken

flint that looked like a spear head or hatchet, and it will

never be presumed that all the broken flints were broken

by the hand of man ; therefore, whether these flints were

crushed by glaciers, or in any other way unknown to

us, the mere breaking of the flint is not a difficulty that

has to be met. Principal Dawson says " no one can

distinguish those which man has used from the vastly

greater number which nature has produced and man has

not touched, except when they are found in association

M'ith unquestionable human remains."'"' As. then, these

flints of the Somme gravels arc not associated with

human remains, and as the vastly greater number have

been produced by nature, the probability, to our mind,

lies on the side of nature having produced them all.

In harmony with Principal Dawson's observations, arc

those of Mr. Whitley, who says " there is a gradation in

form from the very roughly-fractured flint, so rude that it

cannot be ascribed to human workmanship, up to the most

perfectly-formed flake of the arrow-headed t)'pe ;" and

whilst l^incipal Dawson says, " I have picked up in the

flint-heaps by the roadside, near Amiens, and at Dover,

many broken flints that approached in perfection the

implements of the gravel beds," Mr. Whitley tells us that

he has gathered from a heap of flint, undesignedly broken

* Leisure Hour, Nov., 1874.

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35

for the repair of the road, at Menchecourt, most perfect

flint-flake knives, and long-, thin, delicately-formed "arrow

heads, of the most convincing forms." And we suspect

that all localities where chalk and flint are found yield

specimens of this kind. The writer has picked up in

the roads just outside Margate broken flints, the counter-

part of a cast he has had long by him of a supposed

flint knife taken from Brixham cave. He has also found

in the road, between Brighton and Rottingdean, a flint

of the spear-head type, with the conchoidal fractures

similar to the supposed worked flints, and this neigh-

bourhood has afforded no evidence of having been the

abode of Palaeolithic man. Mr. Whitley has shown at

the Victoria Institute specimens of flint broken by

Blake's patent stone-breaker, in which a cast-iron jaw is

worked by a steam engine, which flints, selected from the

broken mass, could not be well distinguished from those

which, in the ossiferous caves, are the reputed knives and

scrapers of PaL-eolithic man.

Mr. D. Wilson, in his PrcJiistoric Man, admits that

unwrought flints in every stage of accidental fracture are

found in the gravels, " including many which the most

experienced archsologist would hesitate whether to classify

as of natural or artificial origin."

Where, then, stands the proof of Man's Antiquit}' ? The

argument for that antiquity rests upon two propositions.

First, that the gravel-drift beds in which the chipped flints

are found, and the ossiferous cave deposits, are themselves

of vast antiquity.

.Secondly, that the chipped flints (or some of them)

found in these gravels, or caves, are the nnqitcstionablc

production of man. Unless both these propositions are

established, the Antiquity of Man remains unproven ; it

is not sufficient to prove one or the other, unless botJi are

C 2

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36

proven the doctrine of Man's Antiquity is left without a

basis.

Wc have attempted to sliow in this paper that neitlier

the one nor the other is proven, and therefore the doctrine

of Man's Antiquity is lacking in scientific evidence.

Geology Silent Respecting illan's Antiquity.

If, then, we are asked what is the teaching of geology

with respect to the date of man's first appearance on the

earth, we are compelled to say that on this subject geology

is silent. It cannot be said that geology teaches that

man became a dcnir^cen of. the earth 5,879 }-ears back, as

reckoned by Archbishop Usher, or 7,286 as calculated by

Dr. Hales, or either of the abo\-c numbers, -with four or

fi\^e thousand years added, as suggested by the interpre-

tation of Professor Gardiner. • These are questions for

biblical criticism, and belong to another line of stud}-

;

but this we do sa}',—that if in that line of stud}' a probable

date can be fixed, there is nothing in geology to prove that

modern date inaccurate. As far as geological facts bear

upon the question of man's introduction to the earth, they

show that it took place in recent geological times, and that

man's advent was accompanied by the introduction of a

vast number of fresh forms, both in the vegetable and

animal life, and that this took place soon after a great

devastation of the former flora and fauna, which devasta-

tion v.-as occasioned by ice and water. To what extent this

destruction took place, is still a question depending upon

the extent of the glaciation of the globe ; and it is to be

remarked that every year brings fresh testimony that this

glaciation Vv-as of greater magnitude than was formerly

* British and Foreign Evangelical Revic'v, July, 1S73.

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37

supposed. This is the definite teaching of geology, and

all beyond this is, at present, but hypothesis.

In the Testimony of the Rocks and Record of Moses *

the opinion is expressed that the To-hoo Va-bohoo, the

" desolate and void" of the second verse of the first chapter

of Genesis is a description of the state of the earth at the

close of the glacial period ; and we are content to wait

until geology has made known the full extent of the

glaciation of the earth, when it will be better seen

whether or not such a creation as that recorded by

Moses was not a necessity (if life on the earth was to

be continued) arising out of the devastation of that

awful period of ice and flood.

Mr. John Evans, F.R.S., and President of the Geological

Society, gave it as his opinion " that the notion of a

great ice cap simultaneously covering the northern and

southern hemispheres could not be maintained, since it

involves the destruction and new creation of the entire

fauna and flora." t

Whilst this would be fatal to the theory of evolution,

it would exactly accord with what appears to the writer

to be the teaching of the Mosaic record respecting the

creation of man and the existing animal and vegetable life.

Science and Revelation not Discordant.

There is an objection at the present time, in the minds

of scientific men, to having scientific and biblical teaching

brought together. It is said that Revelation was not given

to teach us science. True ; but still there may be points

at which they reflect light upon each other. Revelation

was not given in the interests of archzeology, but still the

•' Testimony of the Rocks mid Record of Moses. By T. K. Callard.

t Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, April, 1S74.

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archaeologist and the Bible student have, in company,

found, of late, rich stores for their mutual edification, in

the library of Assurbanipal, amongst the ruins of Nineveh;

and it may be that Geology and Revelation will find some

meeting-place in relation to man's first appearance on the

globe ; but if not, this is certain,—that science, rightly

interpreted, can never be discordant with God's Revelation,

when that revelation is correctly understood.

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR,

Price Sixpence, post free.

THE

TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS

AND THE

RECORD OF MOSES.

An Essay.

'' The author shows that the ' without form and void ' of

the first chapter of Genesis is not the chaotic state of the

primary creation, but the desolation in the glacial period.

We may add, as a striking feature of the essay, the proof it

gives that the Divine work (recorded by Moses) was com-

pleted in six natural days. In a word, it is a most valuable

publication in these days of semi-science."

John Bull.

"I entirely concur with you in your facts, reasoning,

criticism, and results. I have seen nothing upon the subject

so satisfactory to my mind."

Dr. William Paul, Author of

the " Analysis of the Hebrew Text of the Book of Genesis."

ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

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